ROBESPIERRE

kept constantly arriving and there was danger of the
performance being repeated, he allowed the carriage to
proceed unoccupied and entered Arras on foot, in the
midst of his friends. That night many streets and houses
were illuminated in his honour.

But when, on succeeding days, he went to call on
some of his former friends, he felt surprised and hurt
at the coolness of his reception. He failed to under-
stand that what were to him abstract questions of right
and wrong, were to them matters of solid class interest,
and that he—sprung from the bourgeoisie and educated
by the Church—was in the eyes of many of his towns-
men not a glorious champion of the poor and oppressed,
but a traitor and ingrate.

When he went to visit Bethune, a short distance from
Arras, the citizens again came far up the road to meet
him. Men on horseback, preceded by trumpeters from
a cavalry regiment stationed there, escorted a carriage
decorated with flowers, in which he was invited to seat
himself. He put up at the Hotel du "Lion d*0r, the pro-
prietor of which greeted him with the words: "If I had
but one bed at my disposal and had to choose between
lodging the King and you, I would consider it the
greater honour to lodge you".

He remained in his native province six weeks, stay-
ing in the country near Arras—partly to escape the
attentions of his admirers, partly because of that fond-
ness for rusticity he had imbibed from Rousseau. Two
and a half years of life was all that remained to him,
but they were to be years impregnated with such strong
dye of stirring events as would have vividly coloured
the grey pattern of a hundred ordinary lives.

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